


A National Gay Landmark

by sunsetmagnolia



Series: RWRB-verse [2]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Red White & Royal Blue, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:02:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26593381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetmagnolia/pseuds/sunsetmagnolia
Summary: Hiding away to the Victoria & Albert Museum in the middle of the night, from the prince's pov instead of the first son's.
Relationships: Michael Clifford/Ashton Irwin
Series: RWRB-verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1934509
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	A National Gay Landmark

Ashton is well-practiced in sneaking out of the palace, and tonight is no different, though Michael seems surprised that he’s thought of everything himself. He arranges with his sister to stage a disturbance of some sort at the opposite end of the palace, fishes out hoodies and hats for both himself and Michael, and while the security is distracted, he pulls Michael out a side door and shoves him into a sprint across the gardens until they’re safely on the pavement outside. The road is wet from the rain and they’re flanked by tall, red brick buildings.

Michael’s eyes widen and he runs up to one of them, pointing delightedly at a sign on the wall. “Stop, are you kidding me?” he says. “ _Prince Consort Road?_ Oh my god, take a picture of me with the sign.” Michael strikes a pose and Ashton has to remember where they’re meant to be going, lest he stand right there and be endeared by Michael all night.

“Not there yet,” Ashton says over his shoulder. He tugs on Michael’s arm to keep him following. “Keep moving.”

They cross Exhibition Road and duck into a nook between two pillars while Ashton pulls a keyring with dozens of keys out of his hoodie pocket and flips through to find the right one. “Funny thing about being a prince—” he says when he notices Michael gawking at the keys, “people will give you keys to just about anything if you ask nicely.” Ashton motions to Michael to follow him along the nondescript wall. He knows there’s a door about halfway down the wall disguised as a panel that’s only supposed to be used for emergencies and leads directly onto the museum floor.

“All this time, I thought _I_ was the Ferris Bueller of this relationship.”

“What, did you think I was Sloane?” Ashton asks with a grin as he unlocks the door and pulls Michael into the dark plaza. Michael follows him, looking around them with curiosity until they stop at the door where the night security guard is watching for them. He pauses to watch the recognition set in when he reads the inscription on the doors, understanding where they are. “Can’t thank you enough, Gavin,” Ashton says, slipping him some money for his troubles, as per their agreement.

“Renaissance City tonight, yeah?” Gavin says, scanning his entry card for Ashton to open the door.

“If you would be so kind,” Ashton says, and they’re off again. He knows exactly where he wants to take Michael, knows the path there like he knows his own suite. Now that they’re inside the museum, he can barely wait to get to where they’re going, but he lets Michael slow them down for a moment.

“You do this a lot?” Michael asks.

Ashton laughs. “It’s, ah, sort of my little secret. When I was young, my mum and dad would take us early in the morning, before opening. They wanted us to have a sense of the arts, I suppose, but mostly history.” Ashton points to a massive wood-carved sculpture of a tiger mauling a man dressed as a European soldier. “Mum would show us this one and whisper to me, ‘Se how the tiger is eating him up? That’s because my great-great-great-great granddad _stole_ this from India. I think we should give it back, but your gran says no.’” Ashton can feel Michael watching his face as he talks, and then shakes himself out of his memories so they can keep going. He takes Michael’s hand and they start walking as quickly as he can pull Michael along.

“Now I like to come at night,” Ashton says. “A few of the higher-up security guards know me. Sometimes I think I keep coming because, no matter how many places I’ve been or people I’ve met or books I read, this place is proof I’ll never learn it all. It’s like Westminster: You can look at every individual carving or pane of stained glass and know there’s this wealth of stories there, that everything was put in a specific place for a reason. Everything has a meaning, an intention. There are pieces in here— _The Great Bed of Ware,_ it’s mentioned in _Twelfth Night, Epicoene, Don Juan,_ and it’s here. Everything is a story, never finished. Isn’t it incredible? And the archives, god I could spend hours in the archives, they— _mmph._ ”

Ashton is cut off midsentence by Michael stopping him in the middle of the corridor and yanking him backward into a kiss. He blushes when they break apart. “What was that for?”

“I just, like.” Michael shrugs. “Really love you.”

Again, Ashton has to remind himself they need to keep walking instead of standing there staring into each other’s eyes in the darkness. The corridor leads to the atrium, where only a few of the overhead lights have been left on, just enough that they can see where they’re going. “This is it,” Ashton says walking them to the left, where there’s abundant light spilling into the hallway. “I called ahead to make sure they left a light on. It’s my favorite room.” He pulls Michael through the marble pillar archway into the room, where he watches Michael’s expression as he takes in the room, from the vaulted ceiling to the way the floor is set up to look like a city square, with fountains nestled in between statues on pedestals.

Ashton speaks softly, so he doesn’t break Michael out of the same spell he’ll never be accustomed to that befalls him every time he walks into this room. “In here, at night, it’s almost like walking through a real piazza. But there’s nobody else around to touch you or gawk at you or try to steal a photo of you. You can just _be_.” For a brief moment he’s afraid he’s said too much, that he’s lost Michael along the way and now instead of being in awe or wonder he’s thinking about how pathetic Ashton is for stealing away to a place like this when he has the whole world at his fingertips.

Instead, Michael steps back in close and squeezes Ashton’s hand and says, “Tell me everything.”

Ashton leads him around the room to each piece in turn, telling him all that he knows about the myths and stories behind them. There’s Zephyr, Greek god of the west wind carved by Francavilla, Narcissus on his knees entranced by his reflection carved by Cioli – though it was once thought to be a work of Michelangelo – Pluto stealing Prosperina away to the underworld, and Jason with his golden fleece. They wind around the room until they return to where they started, near the arch, and the statue that Michael was staring at when they first walked in. _Samson Slaying a Philistine._

“It’s a bit ironic, you know,” Ashton says, gazing up at the statue alongside Michael. “Me, the cursed gay heir, standing here in Victoria’s museum, considering how much she _loved_ those sodomy laws.” He smirks to himself. “Actually, remember how I told you about the gay king, James I?”

“The one with the dumb jock boyfriend?”

“Yes, that one. Well, his most beloved favorite was a man called George Villiers. ‘The handsomest-bodied man in all of England,’ they called him. James was completely besotted. Everyone knew. This French poet, de Viau, wrote a poem about it.” Ashton starts to recite: “‘One man fucks Monsieur le Grand, another fucks the Comte de Tonnerre, and it is well known that the King of England fucks the Duke of Buckingham.’” Michael is staring at him, looking only slightly confused. “Well, it rhymes in French. Anyway. Did you know the reason the King James translation of the bible exists is because the Church of England was so displeased with James for flaunting his relationship with Villiers that he had the translation commissioned to appease them?”

“You’re kidding.”

Ashton nods. “He stood in front of the Privy Council and said ‘Christ had John, and I have George.’”

“Jesus.”

“Precisely.” Ashton feels a smile curl across his face, feeling honestly sort of vindicated by the fact he could stand there at all, knowing how much most of his ancestors would have hated him, and yet here he is, not catching on fire as soon as he’s stepped into the building. And what’s more, standing in front of a statue that represents the one person in his lineage who dared love a man openly. “And James’s son, Charles I, is the reason we have dear Samson. It’s the only Giambologna that ever left Florence. He was a gift to Charles from the King of Spain, and Charles gave it, this massive, absolutely priceless masterpiece of a sculpture, to Villiers. And a few centuries later, here he is. One of the most beautiful pieces we own, and we didn’t even steal it. We only needed Villiers and his trolloping ways with the queer monarchs. To me, if there were a registry of national gay landmarks in Britain, Samson would be on it.”

Michael takes out his phone and lines up a shot in the corner of Ashton’s vision. He turns around, knowing he’s still smiling. “What are you doing?”

“I’m taking a picture of a national gay landmark,” Michael tells him. “And also a statue.”

Ashton laughs, letting his lungs fill with adoration for how much Michael has already indulged him for the night, not only listening to the history lessons but to his family and everything that led to him being there. Michael pulls Ashton’s baseball cap off and closes the space between them, kissing his forehead. “It’s funny,” Ashton says. “I always thought of the whole thing as the most unforgivable thing about me, but you act like it’s one of the best.”

“Oh yeah,” Michael says. “The top ten list of reasons to love you goes brain, then dick, then imminent status as a revolutionary gay icon.”

“You are quite literally Queen Victoria’s worst nightmare.”

“And that’s why _you_ love _me_.”

“My god, you’re right. All this time, I was just after the bloke who’d most infuriate my homophobic forebears.”

At the back of the room, through a screen, is a second chamber, filled with church relics. Ashton leads Michael in past stained glass and statues of saints until they’re standing in front of a chapel that was removed from its church in Florence. The lighting is dimmer here in the back, casting shadows on them, like they’re really somewhere they aren’t meant to be. “When I was younger,” Ashton says quietly, “I had this very elaborate idea of taking somebody I loved here and standing inside the chapel, that he’d love it as much as I did, and that we’d slow dance right in front of the Blessed Mother. Just a… daft teenage fantasy.” Michael’s gaze is soft on him, waiting for him to make the next move, so he slides his phone out of his pocket and scrolls down to the right music choice. He extends a hand to Michael as the tiny phone speaker starts to play “Your Song.”

Michael exhales a laugh. “Aren’t you gonna ask if I know how to waltz?”

“No waltzing. Never cared for it.” Ashton’s mind flashes back to waltzing at his brother’s wedding, feeling Michael’s eyes on his back even then.

Michael takes his hand, and Ashton pulls him close, seeing the way the low light washes over his face and makes his eyelashes look longer against his cheeks, before pulling him in for a kiss. They’re not dancing in the small space as much as turning slowly on the spot, leaning into each other like they’re the only things keeping each other standing upright, music wrapping around them in a tight embrace, etching a spot for them among saints and songs and stories gone by.


End file.
